Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/453

Rh Then the guild of butchers put in similar claims. To buy raw hides of the herdsmen out on the Puy-de-Dôme was a part of the same suicidal policy. The octroi was therefore assessed on all imported skins. The butchers established their own stock-yards within the city walls, and were saved from the pauper competition of the mountain cattle. Then the mountain herdsmen drove the cattle on to Clermont, and Issoire was left in peace.

But some of the boot-makers complained that this policy was injuring their business by greatly raising the price of hides, whether produced in Issoire or at Clermont. So the mayor sent a letter to the Issoire "Gazette," a long letter which the schoolmaster had helped him to compose, and in which he showed conclusively that the purpose of the octroi was to make things, not dearer, but cheaper. Said he: "The ultimate result of the octroi is always in the end to reduce prices. The sole purpose of the octroi on hides, for example, is to educate our people in the art, so to speak, of raising hides. By this education, they may, by superior intelligence, experience in the business, and the acquirement of knowledge on the subject, be enabled to produce cowhides in such abundance, by new and improved methods, that they may sell them much cheaper than they do now, sell more of them, and yet realize a larger profit on each hide than they can do at present. If there is a fair prospect that this can be accomplished, who shall say that it is not a part of wise statesmanship to attempt this result? Cattle-raising is now carried on in the most primitive way, by driving the cattle about as though they were wild beasts from place to place on remote and uninhabited hills. The octroi will tend to encourage each householder in Issoire to keep his own cow, produce his own leather, thus diversifying his business and giving him some new product to sell every year, some new demand for labor."

And the thoughtful men of Issoire, the leaders of public opinion, saw the force of this argument, and they were satisfied to submit to temporary inconvenience for the sake of the industrial education of the people.

But the boot-trade was already growing slack. The market had supplied boots for all, but the people perversely refused to take them. The shop-windows were full of boots, temptingly displayed in rows of assorted sizes; nevertheless, every person in Issoire, except those engaged in boot-making, seemed bent on wearing his last year's boots rather than pay twenty francs for a new pair. The high price of leather and hides since the exclusion of the mountain cattle began to reduce the profits in boot-making, and so some of the factories threw a poorer article on the market, without, however, any corresponding reduction in price. And people found that it was cheaper to go to Clermont again